TGIF!

 

Another Friday and many of you are on my mind. And the Lord’s. I pray He will be front and center in your life as we press on to more holidays. I pray you don’t get sucked into the “buy, buy, buy” mode and forget that your presence may be the best present ever. Live your life in a way that will make people want to be around you. Remember where you came from.

We pray especially for unspoken requests for families today. Families may be a source of pain, at times, but families can also be a source of healing. Choose which one you want to be.

 

Today is the first day of the rest of your life. Make it count for good. Magnify the Lord with me and let us exalt His name together, forever.

Sunday quotes and a blessing.

 

My soul is a broken field plowed by pain. ~ Sara Teasdale

 

Her past was a tragedy to lament, but her future was an epic to anticipate.

( Mark Buchanan)

He won't brush aside the bruised and the hurt and he won't disregard the small and insignificant, but he'll steadily and firmly set things right.  Isaiah 42:3 The Message

 

Three quotes, with the third ending in hope. More than hope even is faith, that regardless of the hurt, the Lord is on the move to set things right in your life. May you be blessed this Sunday and every day this week. Blessed for your service, blessed for your kindness and blessed for the love you pay forward to others in Jesus’ name.

Grief is learning to dance with the limp

 

“Grief is just love with no place to go.” Jamie Anderson*

 

"You will lose someone you can't live

without, and your heart will be badly broken,

and the bad news is that you never completely

get over the loss of your beloved. But this ...

is also the good news. They live forever in

your broken heart that doesn't seal back up.

And you come through. It's like having a broken

leg that never heals perfectly--that still

hurts when the weather gets cold, but you

learn to dance with the limp."

― Anne Lamott

 

Learn to "dance with the limp."

I love that line but I know it's easier said than done and on Saturdays we pray strongly for those who grieve. Sometimes we grieve those we lost and sometimes we grieve those still among us that seem lost to us. Put your "little faith" together with mine and we will get through it, even if.

* Quote from Tending Dandelions

Praying for families in recovery today.

 “Family connection is harm reduction.” Michael Nolan

It’s Thursday and a great day for recovery for your family. No one said it would be easy but anything good is worth working towards. Yes, a day at a time, as speculating about the future can be overwhelming. Praying for anyone who needs a jump-start, anyone hitting a wall, and anyone who has the glow of finally getting it and overcoming, today.

Change comes. Change hurts, sometimes. Change must occur for help to come. A phrase I use a lot it seems is “Nothing changes if nothing changes.” It’s recovery related and can mean, if you keep doing the same old things expecting different results, it’s not going to happen. Change is essential to life. And life as we know it, will never be the same, it seems. But it can be better in Jesus’ name.

Just as there is no "one way" to recovery, there is no one way to be their family, either. My motto is "Do what you can live with." Some days I can live with what would be entirely impossible to live with for an entire life. That's why we do it one day at a time. In my case and many others, it's with the Lord. So let His praise ever be on our lips this day as we pray for those in a recovery walk and those who need to be. Open their eyes to reality and that there is always help available if they want to be well.

Praying for families, today

 A good thought from Chuck Swindoll: 'What seems frustrating and wrong and unfair is not the end of the story. It is just the end of a chapter."

"My story is more than the sum of my experiences. It is more than what I have seen and done and endured. It is more than what has happened to me.

I, too, am more than the sum of my chapters. I am more than my past or my present or my future. I am more than my history, forgotten or remembered.

I am His.

No matter what.

And that is my story."--Alece Ronzino

Lord, we wanted to live happily ever after, but You alone, will be our happiness. Let us look for that today as it is Monday, a good day to praise the Lord as we pray for families and those who love them. And for those in a season of grief or experiencing a recent loss of a loved one, or the death of a dream, please hold them close, Jesus.

Please send Your strength, help and protection to families, today. Please give us vision and hope as we look to You. And as always, I pray You wrap Your great Father arms around the one who is hurting the most.